And even they who seek her only through science, receive a portion of her own tranquillity, and perpetual youth. The happiest old man I ever saw, was one who knew how the mason-bee builds his cell, and how every bird lines her nest; who found pleasure in a sea-shore pebble, as boys do in new marbles; and who placed every glittering mineral in a focus of light, under a kaleidescope of his own construction. The effect was like the imagined riches of fairy land; and when an admiring group of happy young people gathered round it, the heart of the good old man leapt like the heart of a child. The laws of nature, as manifested in her infinitely various operations, were to him a perennial fountain of delight; and, like her, he offered the joy to all. Here was no admixture of the bad excitement attendant upon ambition or controversy; but all was serenely happy, as are an angel's thoughts, or an infant's dreams.

Age, in its outward senses, returns again to childhood; and thus should it do spiritually. The little child enters a rich man's house, and loves to play with the things that are new and pretty, but he thinks not of their market value, nor does he pride himself that another child cannot play with the same. The farmer's home will probably delight him more; for he will love living squirrels better than marble greyhounds, and the merry bob-o'lincoln better than stuffed birds from Araby the blest; for they cannot sing into his heart. What he wants is life and love -the power of giving and receiving joy. To this estimate of things, wisdom returns, after the intuitions of childhood are lost. Virtue is but innocence on a higher plane, to be attained only through severe conflict. Thus life completes its circle; but it is a circle that rises while it revolves; for the path of spirit is ever spiral, containing all of truth and love in each revolution, yet ever tending upward. The virtue which brings us back to innocence, on a higher plane of wisdom, may be the childhood of another

state of existence; and through successive conflicts, we may again complete the ascending circle, and find it holiness.

The ages, too, are rising spirally; each containing all, yet ever ascending. Hence, all our new things are old, and yet they are new. Some truth known to the ancients meets us on a higher plane, and we do not recognize it, because it is like a child of earth, which has passed upward and become an angel. Nothing of true beauty ever passes away. The youth of the world, which Greece embodied in immortal marble, will return in the circling Ages, as innocence comes back in virtue; but it shall return filled with a higher life; and that, too, shall point upward. Thus shall the Arts be glorified. Beethoven's music prophesies all this, and struggles after it continually; therefore, whosoever hears it, (with the inward, as well as the outward ear,) feels his soul spread its strong pinions, eager to pass the flaming bounds of time and space,' and circle all the infinite.

It is a beautiful conception of Fourier's that the Aurora Borealis is the Earth's aspiration after its glorious future; and that when the moral and intellectual world are brought into order by the right construction of society, these restless, flashing northern lights will settle into an intensely radiant circle round the poles, melt all the ice, and bring into existence new flowers of unknown beauty.

Astronomers almost contemporary with Fourier, and probably unacquainted with his theory of reconstructing society, have suggested the idea of progressive changes in the earth's motions, till her poles shall be brought into exact harmony with the poles of the heavens, and thus perpetual spring pervade the whole earth.

It is a singular fact, too, that the groups and series of Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with Swedenborg's description of the order in heaven. It is said that Fourier never read Swedenborg; yet has

he embodied his spiritual order in political economy, as perfectly as if he had been sent to answer the prayer, "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.'

Visions! idle visions! exclaims the man of mere facts. Very well, friend; walk by the light of thy lantern, if it be sufficient for thee. I ask thee not to believe in these visions; for peradventure thou canst not. But said I not truly that their faces smile through chinks in the clouds, and that their fingers beckon and point upward?

LETTER XXXVIII.

March 17, 1843.

Here it is the 17th of March, and I was rejoicing that winter had but a fortnight longer to live, and imagination already began to stir its foot among last year's fallen leaves, in search of the hidden fragrant treasures of the trailing arbutus-when lo, there comes a snow-storm, the wildest and most beautiful of the season! The snow-spirit has been abroad, careering on the wings of the wind, in the finest style imaginable; throwing diamonds and ermine mantles around him, with princely prodigality.

'And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic, in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age. the mad wind's night work;
The frolic architecture of the snow.'

I had wealth of fairy splendour on my windows this morning. Alpine heights, cathedral spires, and glittering grottoes. It reminded me of the days of my youth, when on the shores of the Kennebec I used to watch to see the river go down,' as the rafters expressed it. A magnificent spectacle it was, in those

seasons when huge masses of ice were loosened by sudden warmth, and came tumbling over the falls, to lie broken into a thousand fantastic shapes of beauty. Trees, mountains, turrets, spires, broken columns, went sailing along, glancing and glittering in the moonlight, like petrified Fata-Morgana of Italian skies, with the rainbows frozen out. And here I had it painted in crystal, by the wild artist whom I heard at his work in the night-time, between my dreams, as he went by with the whistling storm.

Nature, dear goddess,' is so beautiful! always so beautiful! Every little flake of the snow is such a perfect crystal; and they fall together so gracefully, as if fairies of the air caught water-drops, and made them into artificial flowers to garland the wings of the wind! Oh, it is the saddest of all things, that even one human soul should dimly perceive the Beauty, that is ever around us, a perpetual benediction. Nature, that great missionary of the Most High, preaches to us for ever in all tones of love, and writes truth in all colours, on manuscripts illuminated with stars and flowers. But we are not in harmony with the whole, and so we understand her not.

Here and there, a spirit less at discord with Nature, hears semitones in the ocean and wind, and when the stars look into his heart, he is stirred with dim recollections of a universal language, which would reveal all, if he only remembered the alphabet. 'When one stands alone at night, amidst unfettered Nature,' says Bettine, 'it seems as though she were a spirit praying to man for release! And should man set Nature free? I must at some time reflect upon this but I have already very often had this sensation, as if wailing Nature plaintively begged something of me; and it cut me to the heart, not to be able to understand what she would have. I must consider seriously of this; perhaps I may discover something which shall raise us above this earthly life.'

Well may Nature beg plaintively of man; for all that disturbs her harmony flows from his spirit. Age after age, she has toiled patiently, manifesting in thunder and lightning, tempest and tornado, the evils which man produces, and thus striving to restore the equilibrium which he disturbs. Every thing else seeks earnestly to live according to the laws of its being, and therefore each has individual excellence, the best adapted of all things to its purpose. Because Nature is earnest, spontaneous, and true, she is perfect. Art, though it makes a fair show, produces nothing perfect. Look through a powerful microscope at the finest cambric needle that ever was manufactured, and it shall seem as blunt as a crowbar; but apply the same test to the antennæ of a beetle or a butterfly, and thou wilt see them taper to an invisible point. That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds. She wails and implores, because man keeps her in captivity, and he alone can set her free. To those who rise above custom and tradition, and dare to trust their own wings never so little above the crowd, how eagerly does she throw her garland ladders to tempt them upward! How beautiful, how angelic, seems every fragment of life which is earnest and true! Every man can be really great, if he will only trust his own highest instincts, think his own thoughts, and say his own say. The stupidest fellow, if he would but reveal, with child-like honesty, how he feels, and what he thinks, when the stars wink at him, when he sees the ocean for the first time, when music comes over the waters, or when he and his